Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Frightful Films

Where there is no imagination there is no horror. – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

“Scary Movies” is the name of my one year ago today column, but it’s about the interaction between porn and escorting; I did do a short piece on vampire sex workers as part of October Miscellanea, but since I really love horror movies, I think we’re long overdue for a discussion of them. Before we start I should mention that slasher flicks aren’t horror; yes, I know that video stores stock them with horror and movie companies often stamp “horror” on the boxes, but that’s about as valid an argument as “the sex offender registry is not a criminal penalty because it is housed in an administrative agency, not in a court office or in an agency charged with carrying out punishment.” Slashers are actually more closely related to porn than horror; both genres grew out of the exploitation films of the 1950s, which featured both gratuitous sex and gratuitous violence. Those in turn were essentially cinematic Grand Guignol, whereas true horror began as filmed “ghost stories”; the former are theatrical, while the latter are literary. Expressed another way, slasher films are designed to shock the body via intense imagery, whereas horror intends to shock the mind via terrifying ideas. Of course some movies encompass elements of both; Alien (1979) and the original A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) come to mind, as does Prince of Darkness (discussed below). But for me, that’s always an uneasy mix which only a masterful director can pull off.

The four “scary movies” I remember most strongly from early childhood are The Birds (1963), The Blob (1958), Gargoyles (1972) and It Came from Outer Space(1953); considering that three of these are considered classics and I can still recognize the horror in them (though it’s outweighed by silliness in The Blob), I think it’s fair to say that I had pretty discerning tastes from at least the age of six. After discovering the Hammer, Amicus and American International libraries I realized I would enjoy almost anything with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, then about age 12 I inherited my great-grandmother’s ancient Motorola cabinet set, just in time for the debut of a local Friday-night series playing all the old Universal horror classics I had read about but never seen; soon Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Claude Rains joined their successors in my estimation.

When I was 17, a new local TV station signed on the air; it played the syndicated Movie Macabre series (hosted by Elvira) at 8 PM Saturday and followed it with FOUR other horror movies for an all-night fright-fest I watched religiously every week; if a boy wanted to spend Saturday night with me, he had to understand there would be no hanky-panky unless one of the movies was crap. And some certainly were, but a lot of others weren’t, and by the time their programming changed a few years later I had probably seen as many horror movies as it was possible for anyone my age to have seen in those pre-home-video days. By then I noticed a common thread in everything that really affected me; though I might enjoy a film or story for other reasons, the ones that actually succeeded in scaring me (and there weren’t many) were always those in which the phenomena were unexplained. The more a movie or tale explains the scary goings-on, the more of a handle is provided for my rational mind and the farther the pre-rational monkey-brain recedes into the darkness. But if the events are sufficiently mysterious, unpredictable, bizarre and inexplicable, my reason is confounded and the naked savage within is stripped of her defense against terror, helpless in the face of the primeval Unknown. If I find myself jumping at shadows after a movie, I consider it a good one. And if it actually disturbed my sleep, it’s on the list below (arranged in reverse chronological order). Some of these aren’t as scary the second time, but all feature images, concepts or implications which burned themselves into my brain and will never, ever go away.

1) The Ring (2002) Some say the Japanese-language original, Ringu, is better, but I think the subtitles would distract me from those horrible, incomprehensible images on the cursed videotape. The most horrifying aspect is the absolutely motiveless malignancy of the villain.

2) The Woman in Black (1989) An extremely atmospheric, spine-tingling story of a malevolent ghost who haunts a small English seaside town. This British TV movie is extremely difficult for Americans or Australians to get ahold of, but well worth the trouble; some scenes are literally terrifying.

3) Prince of Darkness (1987) Would have been a better film without the gratuitous gore and a few silly moments which ruin the atmosphere for some, but the ideas strongly affected me and what seemed a throwaway bit of mood-building eventually gave birth to a revelation that poisoned my sleep for days.

4) The Shining(1980) Stanley Kubrick’s masterful manipulation of the spinal nerves yields some of the scariest scenes ever committed to celluloid, but the most terrifying moments of this intensely claustrophobic film are not the most obvious ones.

5) Phantasm (1979) is a very strange, disconcerting look at a young teenage boy’s psyche using fairly conventional horror-movie elements in an original and bizarre fashion. The existence of inane sequels does nothing to rob the original of any of its power to frighten.

6) Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) A made-for-TV creepfest directed by John Newland (of One Step Beyond fame) which expertly plays with childhood fears of nasty, dark little places and nasty, dark little creatures that get people.

7) The Exorcist (1973) Floating beds and floating images, scenes that couldn’t be filmed today and moments of pure chaos utterly horrified audiences in 1973; try to forget about the satires and see it as though for the first time. Often imitated but never equaled.

8 ) Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) This film dares to begin with the last scene, and it doesn’t remove one iota of the suspense. A creepy old town, a maybe-crazy woman and a maybe-vampire keep the viewer’s skin crawling.

9) The Haunting (1963) Robert Wise directed this classic and still-terrifying adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, in which psychic researchers investigate a house that was “born bad”.

10) Curse of the Demon (1957) Very subdued, very atmospheric and very, very scary. Even the eventual on-screen appearance of the demon does not ruin this film’s understated creepiness.

As I said, though, I can enjoy a horror film even if I’m not really frightened by it; here are my ten favorite horror movies (excluding those on the list above), also listed reverse-chronologically:

1) The Thing (1982) As faithful an adaptation of John W. Campbell’s masterful “Who Goes There?” as one could wish for; the Antarctic setting, the Lovecraftian monster, the escalating paranoia, and the knowledge that even one fragment of the invader could doom the whole world…brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

2) Theater of Blood(1973) This isn’t scary at all; in fact it’s more black humor than horror. Vincent Price and Diana Rigg ham it up in a lesser-known companion piece to The Abominable Dr. Phibes. I also dearly love Roger Corman’s The Raven (1963), but that doesn’t even pretend to be horror despite the presence of Price, Karloff, Peter Lorre, Hazel Court and a very young Jack Nicholson.

4) Horror Express(1972)Christopher Lee (in a rare heroic role) and Peter Cushing battle a horrible monster (which is much more than it seems) on the Trans-Siberian Express in 1906. Deserves to be much better known.

5) Quatermass and the Pit(AKA Five Million Years To Earth) (1967) The third and finest of the Quatermass series; British science fiction often has undertones of horror, but in this little gem it isn’t content to stay an undertone. Has a similar flavor to the best Dr. Who episodes, but without the humor.

6) Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965) The best of the Amicus anthology titles, with five stories connected by a frame. Lee and Cushing lead an excellent cast for good creepy British horror fun.

8) The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) One of the rare sequels which surpasses the original, and that one is an all-time classic. If you haven’t seen this movie since childhood, watch it again. Trust me.

9) The Black Cat(1934) Lugosi is the tragic hero and Karloff the devil-worshipping villain in one of my favorite movies of any genre; this is the greatest of the Karloff/Lugosi collaborations and arguably the best of the Universal horror classics. It’s spooky, creepy, pre-code sexy and extremely memorable.

10) The Mummy (1932) Unlike the title character in later mummy movies, Karloff’s character is not just a robot; he’s an evil sorcerer who returns from the dead to find his lost love. There are some genuinely frightening moments and an ending which could never have been filmed once the Hays code took effect in the summer of ’34.

78 Responses

Well, Maggie, we have different taste but like the genre.. Slasher movies try to create terror. Horror movies exploit, well, horror. For me there is a short line between the two. Watching someone sharpen a knife while you lay there helpless is terrifying.. Stumbling across the mangled body of your friend in what you thought was an empty house is horrifying.
I review horror films for a local access cable TV program. I recently saw one of the best movies ever just weeks ago, “After. Life” starring Christina Ricci and Liam Neeson. There is almost no blood in it and no stacks of corpses, only a mounting sense that something dreadful is going on. It’s already in the 5,000 top movies in the Internet Movie Database.

When I was a kid, like 6 or 7 I think – and this would have been in the late ’60’s …

There was TV Movie … and I think it was in multiple parts … and … I thought the name of it was “Ghost Story”.

That movie terrified me for weeks and some of those images still haunt my dreams.

It was about a New England home that was haunted by a woman … it turns out – that woman was actually hanged in that house in the early Colonial days because she stole a … loaf of bread.

The way she looked … and the way she would suddenly appear – scared the shit out of me. You just knew she was EVIL incarnate – until the end where you learned she was really a victim. Soo … you went through the movie hating her … and at the end you were forced to change your opinion.

I have NEVER been able to find this movie again. I’d love to watch it again – because my memory is so “fuzzy” about it. I’ve searched on the internet – and I can’t find it, maybe I have the name of it wrong … or maybe I have it right and I’m the only individual on the planet who was impressed by it – so it’s lost to history … I don’t know.

I have never seen “Woman in Black” – but the way you describe it – THAT is the general feeling and atmosphere of the movie I’m talking about.

But … thanks for this walk down memory lane Maggie – you have a lot of my favorites on this list – all of them in fact – since I can’t think of a single one I’d add to your list except the one I can’t find anymore!

Wonderful list. I’ve spent all month watching films in my AIP/Hammer/Amicus library, with some Mario Bava and Dario Argento’s “Suspiria” thrown in for good measure. You don’t mention Bava, but I suspect you would love his films, assuming you haven’t seen them, especially “Black Sunday” with Barbara Steele and “Black Sabbath,” an Amicus-style anthology with Boris Karloff in one of the tales and the framing sequence.

Thank you, Franklin! I’ve seen a number of Argento films, and I think I’ve seen Black Sunday but it was a long time ago. Tonight we’re re-watching The Black Cat; my husband doesn’t remember ever seeing it before.

Given your tastes, you might want to check out of few other British offerings. One is Ghostwatch, which was a made for television offering from the 90s that used actual TV personalities playing themselves on a show that was investigating an alleged haunting. It was styled after an actual crime recreation show called Crimewatch. Rumor (or should I say Rumour) has it that many viewers thought the happenings on the show were real. Also, you might check out the Stone Tape, another TV film but from the 70s written by Nigel Kneale of Quartermass fame. It actually started the idea that hauntings could be impressions of past events recorded in the place where they occurred. The few special effects or iffy, but the atmosphere is great. Lastly a low budget movie called The Bunker. While it involves Germans and WWII it is not the one about Hitler’s last days. It’s about a group of German soldiers who escape an ambush and end up in a bunker on top of tunnels used to store ammunition guarded by a WWI vet called back to the colors and a teenage draftee. As the old guy says, no one likes to be in the tunnels. Don’t be turned off by the stupid DVD cover with its SS zombies, as Monty Python would say, they’d be aptly named as not appearing in this film.

I’m with you on the slasher films. They don’t gross me out so much as amuse me. The gore tends to be so over the top, it’s difficult for me to have the “appropriate” reaction. But those movies that combine both slasher and horror elements, as you point out, are excellent, eg. Aliens. We have a similar appreciation for horror films. I have this thing about watching things that keep me up at night.

I thought I would be distracted by subtitles too, but I wasn’t. That said, if you can try to do that Maggie, then I highly suggest many of the Japanese, Korean, and Thai horror films: Ringu (as you mentioned), Ju-On, The Host (Korean), and Shutter (Thai). Shutter made me paranoid about neck pain and that’s all I’ll say.

Horror Express can be found on Hulu.com for those interested in seeing it. I watched that movie for the first time last year and really enjoyed it. I’m also a fan of both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, which is how I came across it.

But outside of movies, Doctor Who takes the weekly serial horror cake.

Ju-On is The Grudge, right? Is the Japanese original better? Because the American version is ruined literally before the opening credits by an explanation of exactly why everything happens. WTF? What genius thought of that?

Our Halloween night movie this year is going to be Paranormal Activity, which was recommended to me a while back by regular reader Kaiju0; I bought a copy at my favorite used-media store today. 🙂

Yes, Ju-On is The Grudge and the original is definitely better. The typical Korean and Japanese films like to do the big reveal toward the end, it’s quite the climax. I refused to see the American version because I heard from another friend who has similar tastes that the spirit of the story, if you will, was lost in translation: the reveal at the beginning. I would recommend watching Ju-On even if you saw The Grudge because I think there is enough difference in the way the story is told to be able to view them as two separate movies that just happen to have some similarities. There are still parts of Ju-On that make me jump even though I’ve seen the movie five times.

I just watched another Korean film courtesy of YouTube called The Evil Twin and everything doesn’t truly come together until the very end but the rest of the time you’re guessing. Excellent storytelling. The viewer actually sees one of the pivotal moments at the beginning but you don’t get it until the movie comes full circle and you’re like, “Oh..wait, so that means… Oh… OH!!!” 🙂

I haven’t seen Paranormal Activity yet so I’m envious that you’re watching it for Halloween night! Maybe I’ll find a copy of it before then. A pretty good American horror film, in my opinion, is The Messengers. I’ve also heard good things about Drag Me To Hell, so I’ll check that out.

For some reason, most scary movies don’t scare me all that much. I saw “The Exorcist” twice back in the day, the first time I laughed at it, the second time I saw it I was tripping on acid.

So I read your other “scary movies” column. You’re so right about the “not shot in one take” thing. Also, guys need to understand that some of the stuff takes a bit pf preparation. DAP? Fine, but I need some advance warning. Don’t just suddenly try to go there.

I specialized in the PSE type of session, and so had more than my share of clients who had ideas beyond their capabilities. Some were almost funny.

I generally stay away from modern horror movies. I can’t stand gore at all (I can tolerate it in war movies sometimes, but that’s about it). I think the most recent horror film I’ve seen was Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
I really loved the old ones when I was a kid, though. I haven’t seen any in a while. I saw King Kong and a couple of Wolfman movies a few years ago, but I haven’t seen much in a long time.
I remember liking The Black Cat when I was a kid, but I can’t remember anything about it, except that it had both Karloff and Lugosi. (I thought that was a pretty big deal, having both of them together.)
It’s interesting how you said subtitles might distract you from enjoying the movie. When I saw Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu (I still haven’t seen the original), I purposely chose the subtitled version, because I figured it would be spookier in Deutsch. (It was filmed in both English and Deutsch, so neither version is dubbed.)

The movie that terrified me the most wasn’t even scary. It was a bad movie from the ’80s called The Stuff. I made the mistake of watching it on TV when I was getting sick, so by the time I fell asleep with a fever that night, I had terrible nightmares about it. Those nightmares stuck in my head and I had occasional recurring dreams about it for well over a decade.

On my watch list this weekend –
Hellraiser
Prince Of Darkness
The People Vs George Lucas (okay, not horror…but still terrifying to think that Han didn’t shoot first- shame on you Lucas!)
The Haunting
and if I can get to the theater – Paranormal Activity 3.

So to dreams filled with Ingrid Pitt, Barbara Steele and Elvira…Happy Halloween to you all.

That’s a comprehensive list, Maggie, and my taste marches with yours. My particular favourites are The Black Cat, Quartermass & the Pit (though this was much scarier when shown in weekly episodes on TV!), The Wicker Man, The Haunting, The Woman in Black and The Ring.

I’d also add Sixth Sense (1999) and The Others (2001), both of which I found extremely scary and unsettling.

Laura and I need to have a “Horror Weekend” sometime. She did show me Ju-on some years back. Creeeepy.

But I was utterly unable to take The Exorcist seriously. Laura showed me that, too, when I told her that I’d never seen it. I pretty much did a MST3K riff the whole movie. It didn’t scare me, and it wasn’t even that entertaining, except to poke fun at. Maybe I’d heard too much about it, seen too many clips on TV, heard too many jokes, etc.

Rosemary’s Baby worked a lot better for me. The demonic rape scene was lacking in tentacles, but other than that…

I once had a dream (late 1980s) that combined elements of A Nightmare on Elm Street with The Lord of the Rings. Think about that.

I can’t enjoy most slashers. I do want to see Cherry Falls simply because it reverses the usual stupid erotiphobic storyline: in Cherry Falls, it’s the teenagers who don’t have sex that get slashed.

There have been a couple of ghost stories that are really not horror that I’ve enjoyed: The Canterville Ghost (1944), which is a comedy and stars Margaret O’Brien in a wonderful performance. Apparently it’s been remade over a dozen times! The other is Child of Glass (1978), a more dramatic TV movie for children in which a child on one side of the grave seeks help from a child on the other. Takes place in New Orleans, Maggie. 😉

Don’t know if you’ve already seen it or not, but if you enjoy Doctor Who, you might enjoy Halloween III: Season of the Witch. If you haven’t seen it, don’t be fooled by the title; it’s not a slasher film, but something more like “The Wicker Man” meets “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Here’s a review I wrote about it for your convenience:

I remember Gore Vidal mentioning in his autobio how as a young boy, he was mesmerized by a scene in The Mummy, so much so Vidal would venture into screenwriting (ex. Ben Hur, 1959 version) as one of his professions. Great post.

Above all others, frightful to me is the genre of movie evoking psychological terror. Two examples that stay with me to this day…”Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?” starring the iconic Betty Davis, truly terrifying in her madness aimed at her invalid sister Blanche played by Joan Crawford and “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” starring Olivia De Havilland. Both films were featured during a fabulous movie series known as the “4:30 Movie” which I recall watching after school during the late 1960’s. Frightful to me always involves madness. Another movie “Bad Ronald” terrorized me as well, featuring an unhinged young man who remained living in the wall of his home after his parents died, unbeknownst to the new owners. When Ronald crashed through the wall into the unsuspecting teenage girl’s bedroom at the end of the film I was forever traumatized.

I think in principle you could add the Terminator franchise to the horror genre. I know plenty of people who distrust or outright fear computers, and what might become of them once they achieve consciousness, because of it…

Those are magnificent lists (most are in the list my wife and I share under the heading “Infinite repeat watching allowed”). Also, this line…
“Expressed another way, slasher films are designed to shock the body via intense imagery, whereas horror intends to shock the mind via terrifying ideas”
…is one of the best distillations of the functional difference between those genre as I’ve seen.

I’ve been wracking my mind for recommendations, but all I can offer is the warning that later Paranormal Activity films delve into the squalor of explanation (3 and The Marked Ones definitely to be avoided), and a hesistant pointing in the direction of Cursed– not the US-made werewolf film, but a Japanese movie about a convenience store which dare not speak its name. The effects are occasionally on the goofy side, but for the sense of looking inside a crazy person’s thoughts it’s hard to beat. I’ll also mention that the major functional difference between Ju-On and The Grudge is that the original is arranged in a non-linear narrative, which makes what little explanation comes along (I don’t think it’s a fatal amount, for the purposes of horror) that much harder to grasp.

To date, The Ring is by far the scariest film I’ve ever seen. I was in college at the time, and my three roommates and I made it a priority not to see any of the previews or read any reviews about the film. Wow. It might be the only movie I watched in a theater and wanted to leave. I was scared out of my pants.

My girlfriend can’t watch horror films which is crap because I’m not going to be anti-social. I haven’t seen one for ages. I must watch some of these. The wicker man did scare the bejaysus out of me though!

I grew up with horror. As a kid I remember watching the Nightmare movies and the terror that I felt watching Halloween (specifically the scene with the coat hanger). Not a single movie has scared me more than The Shining though. As a kid, simply saying “red rum” would terrify me. Even as I write this I still feel a bit of a tingle.

I love that you also made a list of the classics. “The Bride of Frankenstein” is also one of my favorites, and I agree that it is better than the original. I am a little let down that Night of the Living Dead wasn’t on your list though.

I’m also a HUGE horror / thriller fan – an early memory that I have when I was about 10 years old is begging my father to let me watch Silver Bullet, again and again and again.
I’ve not watched most of the movies you’ve mentioned above so will be getting myself comfortable on the couch for a good old fright-fest!
I once entered a competition where the prize was to watch The Exorcist (original version, re-released after being banned), alone in a movie-theatre! I didn’t win unfortunately but came in the “runners up” group and got to watch it in a movie house with only 9 other people, all of us scattered around the cinema. Brilliant!

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